Video Net
Unilever’s threat to withdraw
its advertising from online video platforms such as Facebook and YouTube if
they cannot guarantee editorial standards is a shot in the arm for traditional
media.
Commercial broadcasters and Pay
TV operators have been leading a pretty successful counter attack against GAFA
(Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) over the past couple of years, having been
gifted evidence that unmoderated online video sites are brand unsafe.
The chief marketing officer of
the world’s second largest marketing spender did not mince his words at the IAB
(Interactive Advertising Bureau) conference in California last week. “We cannot
continue to prop up a digital supply chain – one that delivers over a quarter
of our advertising to our consumers – which at times is little better than a
swamp in terms of its transparency,” said Keith Weed.
This goes beyond the panic that
gripped the industry in 2016 when online ads were placed alongside brand
inappropriate (extremist) content, after which WPP-owned GroupM downgraded its
expectations for Internet advertising growth.
This speaks to the growing
clamour, now heated in political circles, about pressuring – if not legislating
– social media networks to filter posts, videos and threads related to
terrorism, misogyny, racism, hate speech of all kinds, paedophilia and even
fake news.
Unilever, the consumer goods
multinational which spent EUR 7.7bn (£6.8bn) marketing its brands last year,
can chalk up some PR brownie points for making its stand public, though it has
yet to wield the axe properly on Google and others. Another consumer goods
giant, Proctor & Gamble has, slashing 7% ($140m) off its quarterly ad spend
to June 2017, the bulk culled from digital channels. Far from harming sales, it
recorded a 12% rise in income for the period.
P&G’s stated reason may
have been different: that for all its consumer tracking technologies and direct
micro-targeting, digital accountability was proving far from perfect. The
effect was to cast further doubt on the efficiency and transparency of digital.
The latest intervention plays
into the hands of Europe’s broadcasters. Analysts at Liberum, for
example, see an opportunity for ITV to take a bigger slice of the UK online
video advertising market. ITV has a 45% share of the UK TV advertising market
but only 6.5% of British online video advertising, the investment banking and
research company states.
Sky, Scottish broadcaster STV
and Channel 4 have all launched targeted ad products which are proving to spur
investment. Sky, which was first to bring targeting into the linear broadcast
environment, reports AdSmart delivering a 75% return rate, with
channel-switching during a targeted advert reduced by 48%. The integration of
AdSmart into Virgin Media set-top boxes will give advertisers access to 30
million viewers in the UK and Ireland, and give TV sales teams more scale to
compete with social media networks.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 saw
digital revenues from its All 4 multiscreen streaming service climb 24%
year-on-year to £102m (figures at July 2017) and offers personalised
advertising via All 4 across smart TVs, mobile, tablet and games consoles.
One challenge for broadcasters
and platforms when offering targeted advertising – and indeed for the wider
data-driven marketing ecosystem – will be to stay compliant with the European
Union’s incoming data directive (GDPR), which activates in May. By all
accounts, the broadcasters have been pretty rigorous about getting buy-in for
use of personal data from all VOD subscribers.
Into this space will soon march
the European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX) and it could not be more timely. The
joint venture of ProSiebenSat.1, Mediaset, TF1 Group and Channel 4 combines the
VOD platforms of each member and will claim to reach 160 million viewers a
month when it goes live later this Spring. It will offer advertisers the chance
to create pan-European campaigns, at a scale currently only offered by Facebook
and YouTube, combined with what EBX believes is the strong demand for
high-quality and brand-safe video advertising environments.
Delivering a true premium
quality of service is the broadcaster’s ace card – not just in terms of viewer
experience, but for advertisers too. It is the key differentiator between
broadcasters and the likes of Facebook and YouTube, where three seconds is
enough to count as an advertising view.
No-one expects an aggressive
shift of money from established online budgets to TV, but there is a window of
opportunity that broadcasters can exploit. The Internet giants are shaping up
to their own challenges. Google, for example, is pouring money into AI in a bid
to track and remove offending material as soon as it is uploaded and at an
efficiency which is not humanly possible.
Internet advertising promoters
are also keen to move the agenda on. “It is now more critical than ever to
reinforce the quality of the digital advertising environment to ensure that
advertisers have strong confidence, and underpin the delivery of free content,”
says Townsend Feehan, the CEO of the Interactive Advertising Board Europe.
“Ensuring that viewable impressions are measured correctly and consistently
across all markets in Europe is a key first step.”
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